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History of 633 PA Avenue
Mrs. Bethune always said:
"My people should have a strong presence in the nation's capital."
 Her wish has been fully realized with the acquisition of NCNW's national headquarters located at 633 Pennsylvania Avenue - a place of honor, prestige and influence on America's "Main" street, seated comfortably between the White House and the U.S. Capitol.
NCNW purchased the Bethune Council House at 1318 Vermont Avenue Northwest in 1943. Today it is home to the Bethune Museum and Archives, the only archives devoted to Black Women's history in the United States. By an Act of the 102nd Congress, the Bethune Council House became a unit of the National Park Service. NCNW used the equity from the Council House to initiate the purchase of its current headquarters at 633 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest in December 1995.
Our headquarters represents "our women" at the national table and the continued presence of our issues on the national agenda. A spirit of social and civic activism and a devotion to the betterment of the African American community fills this building to which every African American can point with pride.
Slave traders legally operated the "Center Slave Market" on Pennsylvania Avenue at the corner of Seventh Street Northwest.
In 1848 near this site, 76 slaves, including Emily and Mary Edmondson, two teenage girls who followed their four brothers, boarded the schooner the Pearl and attempted to escape to the Underground Railroad.
The story of the slave girls provided the plot and inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. No other single event had a greater impact on the abolitionist movement and congressional debate on slavery.
As Dr. Dorothy I. Height notes, "it seems providential that we stand today on the shoulders of our ancestors with an opportunity to claim this site and sustain a strong presence for freedom and justice."
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